The Empty Chair and the Eternal God

A Letter from the Valley of Miscarriage

There is a silence I know too well.

It settles over the soul like dusk—soft, suffocating, sacred. The kind of quiet that follows a sob, or echoes in a doctor’s pause. It lives in the space where a heartbeat should’ve been. In the shadowed corner of the nursery that will remain untouched, again.

I had another miscarriage.

I write those words not as a declaration but as a release. A lament. A thread on the hem of His garment. I’ve held onto hope with trembling hands, with Scripture beneath my pillow, with communion on my tongue and declarations in my throat. I’ve warred in the Spirit. I’ve believed. And still—here I am again, having walked out of a clinic with arms just as empty as the ultrasound screen.

This wasn’t just a pregnancy. This was a promise.
This was a name whispered in prayer. A dream I had carried quietly, tenderly, like a flame cupped in the wind.

And yet… it slipped through my fingers. Again.

I won’t pretend this doesn't ache like fire in the bones. I won’t dress it in platitudes. I know the sovereignty of God, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t weep until I couldn’t see. It doesn’t mean I don’t stare at the ceiling some nights and ask Him why. Not accusing, not doubting—just a daughter asking her Father to help her understand what her womb keeps losing.

But this is Letters from Manasseh, after all. This place was born from the ache of remembrance and the mercy of forgetting. Manasseh—“For God has made me forget all my hardship.” Not erasure, but redemption. A name that testifies that God is still with us, even when the crib remains empty.

So I choose to write, even now, from this scorched patch of ground—because I believe the Lord is still breathing over it.

I believe He holds every child I’ve lost. I believe He counts every tear. I believe that though I do not yet hold them in my arms, they are known by Him, formed by Him, alive in Him.

And I believe He will not waste this.

Every shattered hope, every dashed expectation—it is not void. It is seed.
Sown in the valley.
Watered with my tears.
It will bloom. Somehow, someday. Maybe not in the way I expected—but in the way Heaven always meant.

If you are reading this and you, too, know the quiet agony of miscarriage, of loss, know this: You are not forgotten. Your baby is not forgotten. The One who knit them in your womb is still holding you both.

One day, the story will make sense. One day, the pain will be swallowed up in glory. One day, there will be no more loss, no more parting, no more tiny heartbeats that fade away. Until then, we cling. We grieve. We bless His name even here.

Even here, He is faithful.

Even here, He is good.

Even here, He is Emmanuel—God with us.

And if I never carry a child to term in this life, if my arms are only filled in Heaven, then I will still praise the One who promised I would never walk alone.

There’s an empty chair at my table. But one day, in a Kingdom where sorrow can no longer breathe, that chair will be filled.

And we will dance. Whole. Healed. Home.

Until then—
I write.
I remember.
I believe.

Love always,
Tanner